Ohio RAAM Challenge – Solo – Sep 2017

Ohio RAAM Challenge 2017

OK, so this happened. A few days ago I decided to enter the Ohio RAAM challenge, starting from Dublin U.S. in September this year. Since commuting each day for around 4 hours, and only being in a new job for just over 6 months wasn’t enough for me.

Perhaps for posterity, or my obituary, I thought it would be worth documenting the next six months or so. Now I’ve read lots of cycling blogs. Writing down, and then reading each ride, the bumps, crashes and weather can be pretty repetitive. But I hope you will bear with me.

I’ll give a little bit of context. I don’t race. I love to train, and I love to ride my bike. I’m from Geelong in Victoria Australia, but I’ve been lucky enough to ride in a few different places around the world over the past 15 years or so. My longest single ride to date is 320 km, which I’ve done a few times, the most recent of which was in New Zealand last November, lapping Lake Taupo twice in just over 12 hours. My hardest ride though was during an Audax event in the high country in Victoria, which was also 320 km in length, but had an elevation gain overall of 5.500 meters. For me that was 14 hours on the bike.

Switching jobs in the middle of last year, and losing my daily cycling commute has put a real hole in my training, so I knew that to keep motivated I needed a new goal. I started to hunt around for something I could commit the time to. But it also had to be harder and longer than I had done before. So I searched the internet, and to be frank, was a bit overwhelmed for choice. In the end I choose the Ohio RAAM Challenge because of when it was run as September gave me enough time, so my logic goes, to get into the right shape, plus allows me to build up enough vacation leave from my job.

Anyway, I’m sure I will fill in more gaps in upcoming posts. For now, that’s all.